Letter: A fair wage for our fellow Americans

Whenever you frequent a fast-food chain, restaurant, hotel, motel, retail store, grocery store, a jiffy lube, etc., you are relying on the services of low-wage workers. You can claim they are staffed by high-school kids, but these places are open beyond after-school hours. You can assert they should go to college to aspire for a better job, but someone has to work these jobs. So they are sacrificed to subsidize you, the customer.

A $10-an-hour minimum wage does not elevate them to middle class status, but it does reduce the exploitation factor. A side effect is they will have more spending power and not have to rely so much on social services such as food stamps and Medicaid, so, in effect, you, the taxpayer, will not have to subsidize them.

If you own a business and cannot afford to pay this living wage to your employees, a wage which puts them above the poverty level, then you should not be in business because the business is fundamentally reliant on slave-type labor. You have alternatives. You can lower your take and live with a little less and/or raise prices. If your service is worthwhile, people will pay for it.

People lament they can't find American goods anymore, and many are willing to pay a little more when they do find them. Well, you are buying American services every day. So let's end the subsidies on both sides and pay a fair wage to our fellow American workers so they can share in the American way of life.